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Busuk’s milky-white teeth had to be filed off more than a fourth. She put her head down on the lap of the woman and closed her eyes tight to keep back the hot tears that would fall, but after the pain was over and her teeth were blackened, she looked in the mirror at her swollen gums and thought that she was very beautiful. Now she could chew the betel-nut from the box her mother had given her!

The palms of her hands and the nails of her fingers and toes were painted red with henna, and the lids of her eyes touched up with antimony. When all was finished, they led her out into the great room, which was decorated with mats of colored palm, masses of sweet-smelling flowers and maidenhair fern. There they placed her in the chair of state to receive her relatives and friends.

She trembled a little for fear Mamat would not think her beautiful, but when, last of all, he came up and smiled and claimed the bit of betel-nut that she was chewing for the first time, and placed it in his mouth, she smiled back and was very happy.

Then the kadi pronounced them man and wife in the presence of all, for is it not written, “Written deeds may be forged, destroyed, or altered; but the memory of what is transacted in the presence of a thousand witnesses must remain sacred? Allah il Allah!” And all the people answered, “Suka! Suka!” (We wish it! We wish it!)

Then Mamat took his seat on the dais beside the bride, and the punghulo passed about the betel-box. First, Busuk took out a syrah leaf smeared with lime and placed in it some broken fragments of the betel-nut, and chewed it until a bright red liquid oozed from the corners of her mouth. The others did the same.

Then the women brought garlands of flowers–red allamandas, yellow convolvulus, and pink hibiscus–and hung them about Busuk and Mamat, while the musicians outside beat their crocodile-hide drums in frantic haste.

The great feast began out in the sandy plaza before the houses. There was cock-fighting and kicking the ragga ball, wrestling and boxing, and some gambling among the elders.

Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by the young men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side, a mile away, where her husband’s big cadjang-covered prau lay moored. It was to take them to his bungalow at Bander Bahru. The band went, too, and the boys shot off guns and fire-crackers all the way, until Busuk’s head swam, and she was so happy that the tears came into her eyes and trickled down through the rouge on her cheeks.

So ended Busuk’s childhood. She was not quite fifteen when she became mistress of her own little palm-thatched home. But it was not play housekeeping with her; for she must weave the sarongs for Mamat and herself for clothes and for spreads at night, and the weaving of each cost her twenty days’ hard labor. If she could weave an extra one from time to time, Mamat would take it up to Singapore and trade it at the bazaar for a pin for the hair or a sunshade with a white fringe about it.

Then there were the shell-fish and prawns on the sea-shore to be found, greens to be sought out in the jungle, and the padi, or rice, to be weeded. She must keep a plentiful supply of betel-nut and lemon leaves for Mamat and herself, and one day there was a little boy to look after and make tiny sarongs for.

So, long before the time that our American girls are out of school, and about the time they are putting on long dresses, Busuk was a woman. Her shoulders were bent, her face wrinkled, her teeth decayed and falling out from the use of the syrah leaf. She had settled the engagement of her oldest boy to a little girl of two years in a neighboring kampong, and was dusting out the things in the camphor-wood chest, preparatory to the great occasion.

I used to wonder, as I wandered through one of these secluded little Malay villages that line the shores of the peninsula and are scattered over its interior, if the little girl mothers who were carrying water and weaving mats did not sometimes long to get down on the warm, white sands and have a regular romp among themselves,–playing “Cat-a-corner” or “I spy”; for none of them were over seventeen or eighteen!

Still their lives are not unhappy. Their husbands are kind and sober, and they are never destitute. They have their families about them, and hear laughter and merriment from one sunny year to another.

Busuk’s father-in-law is dead now, and the last time I visited Bander Bahru to shoot wild pig, Mamat was punghulo, collecting the taxes and administering the laws.

He raised the back of his open palm to his forehead with a quiet dignity when I left, after the day’s sport, and said, “Tabek! Tuan Consul. Do not forget Mamat’s humble bungalow.” And Busuk came down the ladder with little Mamat astride her bare shoulders, with a pleasant “Tabek! Tuan! (Good-by, my lord.) May Allah’s smile be ever with you.”